TikTok, Meta ‘chaos’ reminds Canadian businesses of the value of

For Monika Scott and Robyn Mair, the last month has brought a whipsaw of emotions every time they log onto social media.

Between a divest-or-ban government ultimatum that downed TikTok in the U.S. for several hours on Saturday and users fleeing Facebook and Instagram over Meta ditching fact checkers, the Ucluelet, B.C.-based entrepreneurs say it’s been stressful to run a business whose sales overwhelmingly come from social media.

“Relying on social media outlets that are run by private billionaires can get a little dangerous,” said Mair, co-founder of Mint Cleaning. The cleaning products company attributes 90 per cent of its sales to Instagram, but is also on TikTok, YouTube and Facebook.

“We’re kind of at the mercy of them in a way because we do rely on [these platforms], and it’s a hard battle for us.”

Though Meta’s changes have been restricted to the United States so far, and U.S. President Donald Trump gave TikTok a 75-day reprieve Monday, Canadian businesses like Scott and Mair’s aren’t ready to breathe a sigh of relief just yet.

They see the looming TikTok deadline as the latest in a string of social media changes that have taught them to be nimble and never rely on one platform too much.

“The biggest takeaway is that nothing is guaranteed,” said Scott. “This just really made us aware to diversify our marketing more so than we are now.”

In addition to reminding customers it is active on several platforms, Mint Cleaning is now also pushing the public to its newsletter.

That’s a lesson Aruna Revolution, a Dartmouth, N.S.-based fibre tech company that makes compostable menstrual products, is also heeding.

After observing the recent social media “chaos,” CEO and founder Rashmi Prakash directed customers to sign up for her company’s email blasts, which can’t be threatened by any social media firm’s whims.

She’s also exploring if it makes sense to continue pouring resources into the platforms Aruna Revolution uses: LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

Prakash is particularly wary of whether recent Facebook and Instagram policy changes will increase “greenwashing” — false claims about a product’s environmental benefits.

“With this lack of fact-checking now, there’s going to be more and more people making claims that aren’t true or using the consumer’s lack of knowledge to make them think something is a more sustainable or healthier product,” she said.

Shifting entirely to other platforms isn’t a quick fix for such risks because many are just as fraught as Instagram and Facebook.

Waves of users have fled X, formerly known as Twitter, since it was bought in 2022 by eccentric billionaire Elon Musk, who relaxed content moderation policies, which critics say allowed misinformation to spread.

Some tried Threads, Bluesky and Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote), but none have animated the zeitgeist in the same way TikTok or Meta platforms Facebook and…